Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, if she will make an assessment of the adequacy of funding for specialised rural crime teams.

Rural crime can also have devastating consequences for countryside communities and the agricultural sector. This financial year we are providing the first Home Office funding since 2023 for the National Rural Crime Unit, a national policing unit which help forces tackle rural crime priorities and is a great example of farmers and police working together at national and local level.

Under our Safer Streets Mission reforms, rural communities will be safeguarded, with tougher measures to clamp down on equipment theft, anti-social behaviour, strengthened neighbourhood policing and stronger measures to prevent farm theft and fly-tipping.

The Neighbourhood Policing Guarantee will also ensure that every community in England and Wales will have named and contactable officers dealing with local issues, and that neighbourhood teams spend the majority of their time in their communities providing visible patrols and engaging with local communities and businesses. This will be supported by the delivery of up to an additional 3000 officers into neighbourhood teams by Spring next year, as part of our ambition to deliver 13,000 neighbourhood officers into police forces across England and Wales by the end of this parliament.

We worked closely with policing to develop the Neighbourhood Policing Programme. Our approach to delivery in 2025/26, which is year 1 of a 4-year programme, is designed to deliver an initial increase to the neighbourhood policing workforce in a manner that is flexible, and can be adapted to the local context and varied crime demands police forces face. The precise workforce mix is therefore a local decision.